When the computer takes over, the cabin’s floor lights glow blue, a short jingle sounds, and the steering wheel fidgets and rotates on its own to glide a driverless hybrid Lexus RX around IUPUI.
But it’s never far from a human’s supervision.
In the driver’s seat, Vincent Gill keeps his hands hovering over or below the steering wheel.
“An autonomous ride is really riding with your safest friend,” he said — a friend who sometimes confuses human-shaped signs for people, hasn’t learned the method of easing up on the brake to prevent a hard stop, doesn’t know about U-turns, but on the plus side, refuses to run yellow lights.
The machine keeps learning, and it will always have a human backup like Gill, who runs operations at May Mobility’s Indianapolis site. The Autonomous Vehicle Operator takes over for the car anytime it needs to do un-programmed things, like move out of the way for emergency vehicles or route around construction.
Driverless shuttles in Fishers: There are now driverless shuttles in Indy, and they’re coming soon to Fishers
Frequenters of IUPUI, the IU Health medical campus and some spots downtown have probably seen these green-and-black driverless cars, as a pilot program that began in June is wrapping up in mid November and moving on to Fishers in December.
What they might not know is their M-themed names: Maestro, Mooi, Mandu, Mario and MVEMJSUNP, for the names of the nine planets. They count Pluto.
Three of the five available Lexus vehicles drive 12 hours a day, except the weekends, shepherding riders for free on a continuous 4-mile loop connecting the Vermont Street Red Line station to the university and medical campuses, and to apartments along Indiana Avenue. An all-electric, wheelchair-accessible shuttle named Marbles is also available on-demand.
The pilots are a partnership between the Toyota Mobility Foundation, Energy Systems Network, Indiana Economic Development Corporation, the City of Fishers, and May Mobility, which operates the technology.
The shuttles carried about 8 riders in September alone, driving a total of 6,900 miles.
One goal of the program is to act as riders’ first or last-mile link in a transportation system — like a medical student who takes the Red Line into town and needs another lift to IU Health. Indeed, most of the September ridership came from the Red Line stop, Gill said.
In a place like Fishers, which has no public transit, it could act as a mini transportation system.
Indianapolis’ is one of eight pilot programs May Mobility has deployed across the country and in Japan.
May Mobility engineers teach the vehicles their route based on physical landmarks. While driving, the car uses radars, sensors and cameras in concert with programmed software to choose the best road behavior to employ in every scenario.
When people walk toward the edge of the street, it calculates their velocity to see if it should stop for them. When the light turns yellow, it considers its own speed and distance from the intersection to determine whether it should stop or go. It puts its hazards on when it stops at one of nine pick-up locations.
Still, it gets confused if two vehicles are completely blocking its path, because “turning around” isn’t in its wheelhouse. When cars drive too close next to it, the Lexus may slow down drastically.
Engineers can analyze the car’s video afterward to see if anything wonky happens — like confusing large signs for people — and teach it.
“The vehicles live for this sort of thing,” Gill said.
Contact IndyStar transportation reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on Twitter @kayla_dwyer17.